The Trade Union Congress (TUC) has called for the UK government to implement wealth taxes to help deal with the potential impact of AI on workers across the country.
The TUC is a federation of 47 independent unions representing over 5 million workers in the United Kingdom.
In its recently published pro-worker AI innovation strategy, the TUC states that the potential impact of AI underscores the need for taxation reform to prevent wealth inequality of worsening and to encourage productive investment.
The TUC argues that wealth taxes should form part of a wider strategy to ensure that productivity is put to broader social use and those who are most able pay their fair share towards public services.
This comes as an increasing number of people in the UK and wider developed world are growing concerned with losing their jobs to AI, fears which are exacerbated by tech companies explicitly stating they are replacing their workforce with AI tools.
Companies including Microsoft and Alphabet have said AI now produces a large proportion of their code on certain projects, and Salesforce has said that AI handles as much as half of its coding work load.
Companies doubling down on AI have been simultaneously cutting staff. The TUC cited TikTok as an example of this phenomenon, with the social media company reportedly aiming to make 160 workers in Berlin redundant and replace them with AI.
In addition to calling for broader tax reform, the TUC has outlined a few specific interventions the government could make to avoid disproportionate tax on work compared with those who earn income through asset value growth.
The TUC said the government should equalise the rate of capital gains tax with incomes tax, so that income not derived from work is not rewarded disproportionately.
It also argued that the government should consider taxing excessive bank profits by reintroducing the bank surcharge cut by the previous government.
These and other interventions should be part of a wider evaluation of the tax regime to prevent the replace of workers with AI and instead augment their productivity, the TUC said.
Changes to how companies are regulated were also cited as ways to help protect workers against the impact of AI leveraged by employers. These proposals included requiring companies with over 250 staff to have one third of their board composed of directors elected by the workforce.
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